Now Mike Ashley's after HMV. It won't be long before the Sports Direct boss owns the entire high street

Is Ashley’s aim to create a mini bricks and clicks Amazon from the retail wreckage the latter has left trailing in its wake?

HMV: On sale to Mike Ashley? (AP)

“Sports DirDebenhams House of HMV.Game Evans Cycles Direct today issues the following update: the group has made substantial progress with its acquisitions of M&S, Mothercare, Halfords, Sir Philip Green’s remaining retailers and WH Smith.

“We anticipate completion of all these deals later this year subject to regulatory approval. We believe this will be forthcoming because they know damn well that we’re the only Game.Digital in town.

“We continue to believe that our ambition to make the British high street a wholly owned subsidiary of Sports DirDebenhams House of HMV.Game Evans Cycles Direct is in the best interests of consumers and our shareholders. They don’t have anywhere else to go either.

“As part of this process we have elected to rationalise our portfolio of brands and the holding company under the name of AshleyLand.Retail in honour of our founder and leader Mike Ashley.

“The name change will be effective from the date of our annual meeting when the minority shareholders will do what they’re told.”

Think it couldn’t happen? Ask yourself this: did anyone really believe that a bloke flogging books over the interweb out a Seattle garage would be able to create an all conquering retail behemoth that has blown up the high street, and delivered a good chunk of it into Ashley’s waiting hands.

They’re calling the founder and boss of Sports Direct “Mad” Mike Ashley again now it’s emerged that he’s among the parties interested in picking up HMV from its administrators.

There might be some method at work when you consider that HMV’s suppliers would presumably prefer it didn’t find itself joining the long and growing list of dead retailers, and might be prepared to offer him some sweeties to keep the music playing.

The problem with that analysis was highlighted by retail analyst Nick Bubb who said: “HMV is hardly a licence to print money, given the way the physical entertainment market is collapsing, and it goes without saying that Mike ought to have better things to do.”

It’s hard argue with that. And when it comes to the second point in particular you only need to compare the recent performance of Sports Direct’s core business with that of JD Sports, which this column highlighted last week. The latter is an athlete while the former looks like Ashley in a pair of Lonsdale jogging pants labouring around his local rec.

That’s still pretty good given that the rest of the high street is barely able to put one step in front of the other, at least in a forward direction.

But, critics say, think of where the business could be if Mike just applied himself to it.

He doesn’t show any signs of doing that. He seems to want to turn Sports Direct into a sort of bricks and clicks mini Amazon from picking up trail of debris the latter has left of the UK retail scene.

It’s true that Amazon didn’t become Amazon without Jeff Bezos taking a series of flyers that had people questioning whether he wasn’t bonkers. They still occasionally do that with the high priest of retail, and we could probably do with a few more business people willing to go against the grain and challenge the groupthink that dominates.

The only problem with applying that analysis to Sports Direct is that Ashley is clearly no Jeff Bezos.